In open-plan offices, it is common practice to separate individual workstations by panel screens from which shelves or worksurfaces carrying equipment such as computers are mounted. Conventionally, cables connecting the equipment on the worksurfaces to main services such as telephone lines or electric power run in the bottom of the panels and up through the panels to connectors behind a flip-up panel at worksurface height.
Such conventional constructions suffer from a number of disadvantages, most notably, inflexibility in that to rearrange or relocate the workstation it is necessary to dismantle it by removing worksurfaces and equipment to obtain access to the cabling within the panel screens. Also, as the workstation surfaces are attached to the panel screens, to modify or repair the cabling for one operator will usually result in disturbing other operators in the same installation.